As everyone knows, SpaceX entrepreneur Elon Musk plans to make humanity a multi-planetary species. In December, his celebrated ambition to colonize Mars got a big boost.
Until now, the conventional view of most Mars researchers on the availability of water for colonists from Earth, has been focussed on the poles, where massive deposits of water ice have been located. Unfortunately, the polar regions are also the coldest and most inhospitable that visitors from Earth might face, dropping to as low as 221 degrees below zero F. By contrast, areas near the equator, which bask in relatively temperate conditions–as high as 70 degrees F on a summer day–were thought to be lacking in much water. Picking the best site for a human landing on Mars, presented mission planners with a very difficult dilemma: should they go for the best weather, or the most water?
Now, thanks to a new discovery by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) ExoMars Orbiter, we have learned that an enormous canyon near the Martian equator, the Valles Marineris, likely contains vast quantities of water ice just below the surface, similar to permafrost on Earth —in fact, according to scientists, covering an estimated forty percent of over fifteen thousand square miles. Suddenly, the prospect of actually colonizing the red planet, looks a lot more realistic.
According to ESA data from the Trace Gas Orbiter’s (TGO) Fine-Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector (FREND) instrument, unexpectedly high levels of hydrogen were found. Combined with oxygen, hydrogen makes water, which is the essential component for life on Earth, and, perhaps, as it may yet exist on Mars. The TGO survey focussed on a large region known as Candor Chaos, in the virtual center of the Valles Marineris on the Martian equator. More than 2,500 miles long, 10 times longer and five times deeper than the Grand Canyon of Arizona, the Valles Marineris is the largest canyon in the solar system. If it were on Earth, it could reach from New York to California.
Unlike the barren deserts previously explored by robotic probes from Earth, the scenery of Candor Chaos, could present visitors not only with some spectacular scenery, but maybe, some other, previously little-considered mysteries as well. Not only is it closer than previously considered sites to the Cydonia plain, made famous for the purported ‘Face on Mars,’ the area has at least one anomalous structure that has drawn some serious attention.
In a paper published in 2017 by the Journal of Space Exploration, researchers George J. Haas, et al, studied a large three-sided pyramidal shape photographed by Mars Global Surveyor (image E06-00269) and other spacecraft, in the Western Region of Candor Chasma. According to the paper’s abstract, in the 1970s the structure caught the attention of world renowned astronomer Carl Sagan, who was so intrigued by the 3-sided pyramidal structure, that he presented the image at the Royal Institution in London during his Christmas Lecture in 1977. Sagan also featured the image in his 1980 book and television series Cosmos in which he commented; “The largest Mars pyramids… are much larger than the pyramids of Sumer, Egypt and Mexico. With the ancient eroded shape, they could be small hills, sandblasted for centuries, but they need to be viewed from nearby.” Perhaps now they will be (https://www.tsijournals.com/articles/threesided-pyramidal-formation-in-the-western-region-of-candor-chasma-13507.html).
Given the right circumstances, water on Mars, we now know, could hold more oxygen than previously believed, theoretically enough to support aerobic respiration. A team led by scientists at Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), has calculated that if liquid water exists on Mars, it could—under specific conditions—contain more oxygen than previously thought possible. According to the model, the levels could even theoretically exceed the threshold needed to support simple aerobic life.
“Oxygen is a key ingredient when determining the habitability of an environment, but it is relatively scarce on Mars,” said Woody Fischer, professor of geobiology at Caltech and a co-author of a Nature Geoscience paper on the findings, which was published in October 2019. Their paper was entitled “O2 solubility in Martian near-surface environments and implications for aerobic life.” (https://authors.library.caltech.edu/88984/)
Scientists have speculated that the flowing surface water, in an environment where the temperatures are far below freezing, indicates that there might very well be large aquifers—pools of liquid water—beneath, but close to, the surface.
Clearly, many mind-blowing discoveries lie ahead.
